Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. One robots.txt file for multiple sites?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    One robots.txt file for multiple sites?

    Technical SEO
    4
    4
    2065
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • renalynd27
      renalynd27 last edited by

      I have 2 sites hosted with Blue Host and was told to put the robots.txt in the root folder and just use the one robots.txt for both sites. Is this right? It seems wrong. I want to block certain things on one site.

      Thanks for the help,

      Rena

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • RyanPurkey
        RyanPurkey last edited by

        Hi Rena. Yes, if both sites are separate domains that you want to use in different ways, then you should place a different robots.txt file in each domain root so that they're accessible at xyz.com/robots.txt and abc.com/robots.txt.  Cheers!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • LoganRay
          LoganRay last edited by

          Hi Rena,

          You technically can do that, but it's not recommended - for the exact reason you state above. More often than not, 2 sites aren't going to have the same set of disallow rules.

          Additionally, you should also be using robots.txt files to direct search engines to your XML sitemap, and if you're sharing a robots file, then you can't specify 2 different sitemaps on 2 different domains.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • GlobeRunner
            GlobeRunner last edited by

            Each individual website (and some subdomains if you add them) needs a unique robots.txt file. You can copy the same file and use it again and again on each site, but each one needs a robots.txt file.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            Browse Questions

            Explore more categories

            • Moz Tools

              Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

            • SEO Tactics

              Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

            • Community

              Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

            • Digital Marketing

              Chat about tactics outside of SEO

            • Research & Trends

              Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

            • Support

              Connect on product support and feature requests.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • sjbridle

              Do I need a separate robots.txt file for my shop subdomain?

              Hello Mozzers! Apologies if this question has been asked before, but I couldn't find an answer so here goes... Currently I have one robots.txt file hosted at https://www.mysitename.org.uk/robots.txt We host our shop on a separate subdomain https://shop.mysitename.org.uk Do I need a separate robots.txt file for my subdomain? (Some Google searches are telling me yes and some no and I've become awfully confused!

              Technical SEO | | sjbridle
              0
            • Whittie

              Robots.txt on subdomains

              Hi guys! I keep reading conflicting information on this and it's left me a little unsure. Am I right in thinking that a website with a subdomain of shop.sitetitle.com will share the same robots.txt file as the root domain?

              Technical SEO | | Whittie
              0
            • NicDale

              Is there any value in having a blank robots.txt file?

              I've read an audit where the writer recommended creating and uploading a blank robots.txt file, there was no current file in place.  Is there any merit in having a blank robots.txt file? What is the minimum you would include in a basic robots.txt file?

              Technical SEO | | NicDale
              0
            • moby123

              Lost with conical, nofollow noindex. Not sure how to use it on a dyanmic php site with multiple region select options

              I have a site with multiple regions the main page after a region is selected is login.php but the regions are defined by ?rid=11 , 12, etc. These are being picked up as duplicate content but they are all different regions. As i hired external php coders to develop most of the site I am scared to start meddling with any of the raw code and would like some advise on how to not show these as duplicate content. should i use noindex nofollow or connical? if Connical how do i set it up on the main login.php page? p.s. i am an extreme nube to seo

              Technical SEO | | moby123
              0
            • franchisesolutions

              What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?

              I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!

              Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions
              1
            • Nightwing

              Does Bing ignore robots txt files?

              Bonjour from "Its a miracle is not raining" Wetherby Uk 🙂 Ok here goes... Why despite a robots text file excluding indexing to site http://lewispr.netconstruct-preview.co.uk/ is the site url being indexed in Bing bit not Google? Does bing ignore robots text files or is there something missing from http://lewispr.netconstruct-preview.co.uk/robots.txt I need to add to stop bing indexing a preview site as illustrated below. http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/preview-bing-indexed.jpg Any insights welcome 🙂

              Technical SEO | | Nightwing
              0
            • Scratch_MM

              Does posting an article on multiple sites hurt seo?

              A client of mine creates thought leadership articles and pitches multiple sites to host the article on their site to reach different audiences. The sites that pick it up are places such as AdAge and MarketingProfs and we do get link juice from these sources most of the time. Does having the same article on these sites as well as your own hurt your SEO efforts in any way? Could it be recognized as duplicate content? I know the links are great just wondering if there is any other side effects especially when there are no links provided! Thank you!

              Technical SEO | | Scratch_MM
              0
            • SEOPA

              Same Video on Multiple Pages and Sites... Duplicate Issues?

              We're rolling out quite a bit of pro video and hosting on a 3-party platform/player (likely BrightCove) that also allows us to have the URL reside on our domain. Here is a scenario for a particular video asset: A. It's on a product page that the video is relevant for. B. We have an entry on our blog with the video C. We have a separate section of our site "Video Library" that provides a centralized view of all videos. It's there too. D. We eventually give the video to other sites (bloggers, industry educational sites etc) for outreach and link-building. A through C on our domain are all for user experience as every page is very relevant, but are there any duplicate video issues here? We would likely only have the transcript on the product page (though we're open to suggestions). Any related feedback would be appreciated. We want to make this scalable and done properly from the beginning (will be rolling out 1000+ videos in 2010)

              Technical SEO | | SEOPA
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.